ATLANTA – Georgia’s decades-old certificate of need (CON) law governing hospitals and health-care services has never achieved its intended purpose and should be reformed or scrapped altogether, witnesses told a state Senate study committee Tuesday.
Congress passed the CON law in 1979 requiring applicants wishing to build a new hospital or provide new medical services to demonstrate a need in their community. But the federal law was repealed in 1986 because it wasn’t meeting its goal of reducing the costs of health care by avoiding duplication, Thomas Stratmann, a senior research fellow and economics professor at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, testified as the Senate Study Committee on Certificate of Need Reform opening hearings on the CON issue.
Since the federal repeal, 34 states – including Georgia – have chosen to continue enforcing state-level CON laws, while only 12 have fully repealed their CON laws. Four have reformed their CON requirements to exempt certain types of facilities, notably nursing homes.
“Keeping CON on the books has resulted in negative consequences for patients,” Stratmann said. “It reduces health-care quality, reduces access to health care, and reduces availability of medical equipment.”
The study committee was formed after legislation championed by Senate Republican leaders aimed at CON fizzled in the General Assembly this year. One of the bills called for exempting most rural hospitals from the law, while the other would have repealed...
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